flyingsoul

I follow the evolution / ID culture war pretty closely, but it occurred to me a while back that I had very little actual understanding of the science behind evolution. After reading Coyne’s book, I realize that I had more than I knew I did, but that I was missing a lot. Why Evolution is True demonstrates with strong clarity why evolution has proven itself to scientists as broadly and throughly as gravity. Unlike Miller’s Only a Theory, which focuses specifically on creationist arguments and why they’re bogus, Coyne explores evolution from the perspective of “how has this convinced us,” and he does so thoroughly. A few fun facts and good quotes: * Evolution depends on six concepts: “evolution, gradualism, speciation, common ancestry, natural selection, and nonselective mechanisms of evolutionary change.” Coyne explains each. * Whales descended from land animals. Their closest living relative is the hippo. They have hip and leg bones and occasionally one will be born with a leg. * The number of spots on the male peacock helps determine how sexy he is to the female peacock. One theory about this is that evolution to appreciate a certain color for unrelated reasons leads to sexual selection. Coyne writes “Suppose, for example, that members of a species had evolved a visual preference for red color because that preference helped them locate ripe fruits and berries. If a mutant male appeared with a patch of red on his breast, he might be preferred by females simply because of this preexisting preference.” (167) In other words, the females would select males because they look tasty. * The lineage of ape to human evolution is astonishingly well defined. The “hobbit” species, Homo floresiensis, an offshoot protected from worldwide species evolution by geographic barriers, lived as recently as 18,000 years ago. * The best argument against intelligent design is the bad design we find throughout complex life forms. By contrast, if we follow clues to explain development of one trait through adaptation from another, most of these bad designs make sense. One extended quote I really like. [Creationists argue:] that all the perceived evils of evolution come from two worldviews that are part of science: naturalism and materialism. Naturalism is the view that the only way to understand our universe is through the scientific method. Materialism is the idea that the only reality is the physical matter of the universe, and that everything else, including thoughts, will, and emotions, comes from physical laws acting on matter. The message of evolution, and all of science, is one of naturalistic materialism. Darwinism tells us that, like all species, human beings arose from the working of blind, purposeless forces over eons of time. As far as we can determine, the same forces that gave rise to ferns, mushrooms, lizards, and squirrels also produced us. Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible– though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are never needed: we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism. Furthermore, supernatural explanations always mean the end of inquiry: that’s the way God wants it, end of story. Science, on the other hand, is never satisfied: our studies of the universe will continue until humans go extinct.

2023-07-10 00:11